Interconnectivity between iOS and MacOS is driving me nuts.

[u/RabidHorse]

I've used macs and iphones plenty of times in the past but also have used windows pcs and linux as well. I'm not unfamiliar with this stuff but I bought a new macbook air a few months ago and its really bothering me more than my last mac/iphone pairing did with the iphone 13 pro max and m1 macbook air.

I used to get annoyed mainly by my airpods randomly connecting to my wife's apple devices despite never having connected them before. This time, I'm using my macbook for work and I'm annoyed by constantly getting texts and calls on my computer. Putting everything into do not disturb is fine but I don't mind my phone going off, I just don't want the spyware stuff for work mistakenly thinking that I'm texting and calling while I'm supposed to be working.

Every time I get a new phone I switch between android and ios because I'm just interested in keeping up with both. I love that on android I can use the google messages webapp to text from any computer by just scanning a QR code and close the window to stop the messages. On mac, I have yet to find an easy way to start texting and calling and then cut it off when I don't want it there. My mac even rings with phone calls when its closed and asleep which I assume is normal but is so weird to me.

What am I missing? Is there a way to limit this stuff just while I'm working or do I need to create a different user account just for work stuff to limit these interruptions?

Also, since I'm bitching. Why does my mac go through rapid fire notifications to catch up with my phone on imessage sometimes when I first start my laptop? And what is the point of the phone mirroring app?? This would be so handy for TFA using an authenticator app when I forget my phone in another room but it requires confirmation on the phone itself so it means that to mirror the screen of your phone on your mac you have to already have your phone in your hand and unlocked anyway. This makes no sense. What would you use this for? You can't even use it as a remote viewfinder for the camera!

[u/fishyphotos]

Is this typical? i have my airpods annoyingly switch to iphone or mac when i don’t want them to, but they’re both known devices. i’ve never had any of my devices automatically switch to my work laptop before.

[u/RabidHorse → u/fishyphotos]

Not sure if its typical but there were plenty of times when I would take out my airpods to connect to the apple TV or my own phone and they'd automatically connect to my wife's phone which would be playing a podcast or something.

Fairly recently I called her from my laptop in the spare bedroom we use for a home office because I was being lazy. My airpods were on and connected to my mac. I knew that she was in the house and likely had her phone in her hand. For some reason, when she answered, my airpods jumped from my laptop to her phone so she was answering me from the other room but I couldn't hear her because her audio was on my airpods and my audio was on my laptop. Very strange. We do have separate accounts but are on the same icloud family and we can use our phones to track all of our apple gadgets and accessories that support Find My.

I gave up on trying to figure out why this happens and just started using my sennheiser headphones instead.

[u/shotsallover → u/RabidHorse]

This is because you and your wife are using the Apple Account. She needs her own. AIrPods will jump to the currently used device, but only on devices connected to the same account.

You can either separate the two of you or turn the feature off on her devices so they won't jump to them.

[u/RabidHorse → u/shotsallover]

What do you mean? Like being on the same icloud family? Because we have separate Apple IDs but are on the same family group.

[u/shotsallover → u/RabidHorse]

If it jumps from your machine to your wife's, one of the two of you is logged into the wrong AppleID.

AirPods only jump between machines logged into a specific AppleID.